Tag: riesling

Year of the Snake February 10, 2013 is a new Chinese New Year.  This new year will be the Year of the Water Snake. It begins on the first day of the first lunar month (usually in late January or early February) and ends on the 15th day of the first lunar month (Lantern Festival). According to Chinese Horoscopes, “Ancient…

I hazard to guess how many wines I tasted over the past year, but every year I find several gems that I pass along to you as I taste them.  Getting ready for the holiday season, you may be considering buying wines to take to parties, or serving wines at your parties.  What to buy? Here is a list of…

Recently I received two new red wines from Spierhead Winery; Vanguard 2010, and Pursuit 2010.  If you have not heard of Spierhead before, they are a relatively new winery, located in Kelowna, BC.  They were named BEST NEW WINERY at the  2012 B.C. Wine Awards. The first wines I tried from Spierhead was a Pinot Noir and a Riesling (Read my tasting notes…

This is my second year at the Taste of Tulalip. Last year I was getting my feet wet, trying to learn the ropes.  Here is the  link to my Celebration Dinner notes last year.  This year, I came prepared with a plan, and how to pace myself.  The Taste of Tulalip starts off with the Friday evening Celebration Dinner, where…

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure to interview Ezra Cipes, CEO of Summerhill Pyramid Winery, located in Kelowna, BC.  One of the things Ezra told me about was a new line of BC VQA wines that they are producing called “Alive“, making both a red and a white wine.  The wine labels really look alive too with pictures…

When you talk with visitors to the Okanagan, most will say they want to visit Summerhill Winery and see their pyramid, where they partially age all their wines. Some may say they also want to visit because it uses biodynamic farming methods.  I sat down with Ezra Cipes, CEO of Summerhill, and son of the founder, Stephen Cipes, at a restaurant…

From the Fall through Spring, the Import Vintners & Spirits Association (IVSA) hosts a regular tasting of importers latest wines, beer and spirits.  The kick-off for the fall was last week, and it was very busy.  Again too many wines to try, so I went table by table trying to find wines of interest, or completely new wines/wineries I have…

I was happy to be invited for the second year in a row to the Select Wines & Spirits’ Annual Portfolio Tasting, held at the Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club.  Last year I found several gems that I passed along to you, and you will read about my latest wine recommendations.  You may want to compare to my last year’s…

Probably many of us know little about Oregon wineries, unless we are a pinot lover.  It is a very nice place to visit, with many wineries or tasting rooms in the McMinnville area. For those of you that are geographically challenged, here is a Google Map of the area. View Larger Map French winemakers have recognized the suitability to grow…

I first met Bill Knutson, Proprietor of SpierHead Winery during the Spring VQA wine release in Vancouver.  We talked about their wines and Bill promised to send me a bottle of the new wines that would soon be released.  Fast forward to last week and two bottles showed up at my door.  The SpierHead Pinot Noir 2010 and the SpierHead…